Agent to Agent: How to Build Effective Management and Leadership Skills in Your Agency

By Jim GroningerGroninger Insurance

Creating and maintaining effective management and leadership skills throughout your agency is a crucial factor of its overall future success. Not only is it necessary for the official managers and owners of the agency to understand effective leadership skills, but it is also important for employees to be trained on these skills in order to sustain the future of the business and grow over time.

Having inadequate leadership skills is one of the major flaws of some agencies today. Learn how to resolve this problem and set your agency up for future success by following these tips on building effective management and leadership skills in your agency:

Managers should focus on creating positive relationships within their teams and across the entire agency. Cohesive teams in which everyone is working towards one goal are significantly more effective than teams in which employees don’t feel a common goal to motivate their actions.

Create a mission statement that encompasses the values and goals of your agency. Make sure that it resonates with all employees, not just the top managers.

Provide clear and measurable objectives for all team members to work towards, and post them in a place in your office where people will see them. This will continue to motivate employees even more because it instills a feeling of accountability.

Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of every team member.

Rather than calling out mistakes or punishing employees who are not meeting expectations, it’s more effective to reward the team members who are exceeding goals and objectives.

Provide incentives to succeed and meet goals, whether it is a monetary reward, an employee of the month title, or other form of recognition to work towards.

Create an environment that fosters communication among your team, and across teams. If someone is not meeting expectations or performing well, do not put off talking to them and resolving the issue, or else the problem will only continue to worsen.

Avoid this common agency dysfunction by following tips such as these to develop more effective management and leadership skills within your agency!

Groninger Insurance of Northumberland, Pennsylvania serves the business and personal insurance needs of area residents and companies. Jim Groninger operates the family-owned agency with his brother Jon Groninger.